Red and Blues
by theorangesauce
Summary: (Prequel) (Ignoring comics) Set during the construction of the Shard, Faith is on a mission when things go bad...


Gunshots echoed as Faith ran down the hall, her bag bouncing against her left leg with an urgent, deadly rhythm.

Seconds earlier: "Drop the bag and put your hands up, or we _will_ open fire!" She had been waiting in a square room. Her client had already left, the information lay safe in her messenger bag, and she stood in front of the doorway. Faith always made a point of conducting handoffs near the exit; it made escape easier in case the police—blues—caught wind of it.

Her trained eye counted three. Three blues, probably all they sent, but reinforcements were still a possibility. She could take three on, certainly. Four, on a good day. More, perhaps not. Either way, hitting a police officer would raise their threat level from 'trying to chase her' to 'hunting her down with a vengeance.' Faith slipped a small smoke bomb into her hand. Fighting might not be the best plan, but distracting them would work just fine. Hopefully.

"Runner," a police officer said, "Drop the bag. Now. Or-"

She slid the pin out with her thumb and tossed. Instantly: a cloud of smoke, three disoriented blues, a door slammed open with a loud metal _thunk_. She figured she had maybe a few seconds before they started chasing; adrenaline gave her an extra burst of speed down the hallway as she scanned for exits.

Paintings lined the walls. Modern art; streaks of paint slapped across the canvas. A few doors down on either side of her, but none looked like escape; more like offices. Then, at the very end of the hall, to the left of a giant window, a flash of red. Instinct told her what sat behind it: an elevator! Her escape route.

Faith elbowed open the door, and behind her she could hear the three blues—more? She couldn't tell—giving chase. A gunshot cracked the window behind her as she stepped through, concentric cracks spidering out from the hole.

She was no stranger to gunfire. Her job—transferring unapproved information—was illegal, and when you do illegal things in an Orwellian police state the police tend to get slightly annoyed. About four or five times per month she had to face live fire, so she was used to it at this point; nevertheless, it did help get the rest of her adrenaline to her brain.

Taking a sharp left turn, the elevator beckoned from her right side. Her gloved right fist mashed the button, and by some stroke of luck the doors smoothly slid open. She dashed inside.

She pushed the button labeled "Roof Access" with her index finger, taking a deep, calming breath, and stood in silence, staring at the bright green walls and stretching her legs. The silence didn't last long, though; the comms unit in her left ear buzzed underneath her pitch-black hair, and she reached up to reopen the call.

Instantly the indignant voice of Mercury blazed through the tiny speaker. "What the hell, Faith!" he said, "Where have you been?"

"Busy."

"No _shit_ you've been busy! The police chatter is off the charts, and there you are, right in the center of it with your comm off!"

"What?" Faith said in what was unmistakably a snarky tone. "I needed some quiet for once, Merc."

"And gunshots are quiet?"

"Those weren't exactly on the menu for this job, were they?"

His voice shifted back to his usual, caring self. "Whatever. The important thing now is getting you out. You in the elevator?"

"Yeah. Heading for the roof."

"Let me check the map." Merc's fingers clacked against an ancient mechanical keyboard, and instantly a 3D map of the city sprang up on his monitor, the Shard—still unfinished—towering over the rest of its skyscrapers. Within seconds Faith's current position flashed green.

"Alright. Looks like your best exit is south. Head towards the Raposa building, and take a right just before it. Celeste has a hideout there; she's between jobs at the moment, you can stay with her."

"Got it, Merc." The elevator shook to a stop and rang open. "Elevator's open. Let's go."

"Get a move on, Faith," he said before cutting the voice connection. She stepped outside.

Though she may have lived in a gutted AC tower, the rooftops of this city were her one true home. Ever since that rainy day at sixteen, quietly slipping out the window into the cold wet night, she had been running and running across white roofs and blue walls. Memories of the November Riots still shone like floodlights in her mind: protests against the governments "information security" that they violently crushed. It was when she broke into Merc's base of operations, squeezing herself through the ceiling, that he decided to take her in, become her surrogate parent, train her in parkour; now she worked as a runner, delivering illegal information across the city so she could live in relative comfort. It was the best job she could have dreamed of.

Faith leapt down to the next building, rolling at the bottom and continuing on. Ahead of her, behind air vents and giant rectangular AC units, scaffolding caught her eye, with translucent-blue plastic sheets of blue and one bar really white but appearing red to her. Building up speed, she springboarded up on some boxes and grabbed the bar, swung on to the thin metal pathway within. It only took five seconds for her practiced arms and legs to reach the top of the catwalk. Pausing for a moment, Faith checked behind her.

Gunshots. Blues had finally reached the roof. She kicked off, eyes frantically scanning for paths. One in particular jumped out at her: wall-run, jump to the wall next to it, turn around, push off to the roof. Not many people could do that. She could.

Glancing back, she saw that her pursuers had been left behind, trying to figure out a route to her new location—with less parkour. She sighed in relief—until the voice of Merc echoed in her ear.

"Bad news, Faith." His voice carried a feeling of urgency, and she knew what he would say before he said it. "There's SWAT guys on the building ahead of you. You'll have to go all the way around Raposa if you want to get past them."

"Or I could cross through the Shard."

Not much was capable of startling Merc, but that caught him completely off-guard. "Sure...wait, what?"

"Going around would take fifteen minutes, at least. So instead I'm going through the Shard. Three blocks west, two south, right? Check the map."

"Yeah, it works on paper, but it's still the Shard. Sure, it's under construction now, but it's also going to be the main government building for the entire goddamned state! The surveillance there will be bigger than the rest of the city combined! Even CityEye won't be able to beat the Shard."

"Understood, Merc."

A pause. "You're still going." Even without any visuals, he could perfectly picture the excited look on her face.

Faith didn't respond. "Alright," a resigned Merc said, "get yourself killed if you really want. I'm gonna get me some more coffee." His comm blinked off.

She took a sharp right, crossed a relatively flat building and found herself staring at the brilliant-blue scaffolding surrounding the building-in-progress. None of the workers were on the job—not on a Saturday—which meant she could easily sneak through the thin metal pathways.

The next step was easy. Formulating a path, Faith sped towards the top with unerring precision, running up ramps and off walls, the soft klaxon of her feet on metal giving the dance its rhythm. Fingers grasped the curled grey edge and she pulled herself up on the highest platform—nearly the highest point in the city—her feet sliding gracefully on the cold hard sheet. But now was not the time for enjoying the view. Looking ahead, a mass of irregular girders and temporary platforms coated the top, some intensely bright, some excessively dark, and the only way across was to sort of hop from girder to girder and hope you didn't slip before you reached the bright red crane sitting on the opposite end. "Not like I have a choice," she muttered to herself, and she reached out to test the first beam.

Stable enough. Quickly she hopped from the scaffold to the first bar, and from the first to the second. For a moment, it all felt easy; for a moment, she was home free.

Then a sniper round drilled a hole in the metal next to her, missing her neck by only a few centimeters.

A lesser lady would have panicked. Which doesn't mean she didn't, partially; as her body ducked down and her hands leapt to steady herself and her eyes spotted the smoke trail spiraling from the shaft sliced through the metal, she felt her pulse rise to unhealthy levels and an involuntary gasp issue from her mouth. Despite that, Faith managed to stay focused enough to remember how to handle this situation: analyze her environment, identify who and where the shooter is, escape from him as soon as possible.

The first was arguably the hardest. The metal bar on which she sat measured maybe a yard or two long and two feet wide, enough for her to survive but not enough to allow the freedom of movement she wanted. Faith still had the option to leap to the next platform; except this one was the only platform with any semblance of cover.

Identifying her assailant proved to be a slightly easier task. The bullet came from somewhere above her, and there was now only one building which still reached above the Shard: the building just north of it, formerly the tallest building in her city (well, still the tallest, but not for long). If you stood on the highest point on its roof—the exit of the maintenance-access stairway—you could just barely hit faith's location. She squinted.

Her would-be killer's body stuck out just above the white protrusion; she strained to discern his features. He wore a mask; he held a high-quality sniper rifle; his mostly-white body suit blended well with the blank tiled slate that was the wall. What she couldn't see: the sniper's feminine curves, a tear escaping her squeezed-shut left eye, her white-and-black-gloved finger trembling by the trigger.

The important thing, though, was that she knew the sniper's location. Running like wildfire through calculations, Faith's brain marked a route through the maze of girders that would afford the fewest chances for unwanted bullet strikes. Hop to one beam, swing under the next, land on the catwalk, run to the edge, slide down the crane arm to the safe building below. Every break between the sheets could mean an extra hole in the side of her head, so she would navigate past most of them, but there were still three on her route, so time would tell whether she made it through. Faith took a sharp breath and pushed off.

She leaped. No shot.

She swung. Still nothing.

She let go of the bar and her feet touched steel and a shot rang out above her and she tensed her muscles in expectation of death. As soon as Faith realized she wasn't, she decided to hazard a glance at the assassin.

A perfect opportunity—he was reloading! Seizing her chance, Faith ran at maximum speed down the girder to the outer wall and practically flew onto the crane, sliding to the bottom and disembarking with the grace of an olympic gymnast, landing with a somersault on the hard, shadowy floor.

It was a few seconds before Merc's voice slowly flowed from her comm. "...Wow," he said at the speed of molasses, "I've got no idea how you managed to do it, but you did that with style. Caught a lucky break with that sniper, huh?" When the only response he received was the sound of her footsteps, he asked her again. "Faith?"

The tired runner stayed silent, still denying that she hadn't been fatally shot and that she wasn't falling down the Shard to the depths below. Absentmindedly, heartbeat still sprinting, she jogged toward Celeste's hideout without really thinking, leaving the Shard—and its specter—behind her.

Eventually, Faith reached the hideout and sat down, collapsing into a cheap office chair. The place looked modest; it had a few chairs, an impromptu bedroll, a table, and Celeste's laptop, complete with an ethernet cable connecting her to the building's internet. Her friend was nowhere to be seen. Relaxing, she started to open her bag, rhythmically tapping the combination to its complex lock.

Faith's messenger bag had two compartments. One, the upper one, held items for delivery; that one she wasn't supposed to touch outside of a handoff. The other one held her necessities: laptop, portable hard drive, notebook and pencil, cheap prepaid phone, some money, a picture of her sister Kate—an officer. Sliding out the laptop and stealthily grabbing the ethernet cable from Celeste's, she started typing a few notes when her comm came back online.

"You willin' to talk to me now?" his gruff voice asked through the low-quality speaker.

"I should be dead."

Surprised, Merc sat silent for a moment. "But you aren't, Faith, and that's what matters, right?"

"He nearly hit me, with that first shot. I felt the bullet fly by, felt the shockwaves when it hit that metal plate. He knew what he was doing."

"Faith-"

"That second shot flew right over me, Merc. Barely a foot above my head; I could feel it fly past. I don't know what he did—twitched, blinked, whatever—but that bullet was destined for my head, and it was something that goddamn sniper did that made it miss!"

"Jesus, Fai-"

"I'm alive at _his_ mercy, Merc. I'm alive because of him; I owe my life to a stupid _blue_ sniper. How am I supposed to live with that?"

Both sat silent. Eventually Merc spoke up: "I know you; I know you can get through this. You've survived a lot of close calls before," he offered.

"Not like this. Not this close."

She continued typing, and Merc sat behind the mic at his computer, trying as hard as he could to place the words he wanted to say. After a minute or so of thinking he gave up. "Hey, is Celeste there?" he asked, changing the subject, "She's not on a job at the moment."

"No," Faith said in monotone. She could have said more, but she was still having some trouble re-establishing her connection to the material world.

"Not showing on the map." A few quick keystrokes confirmed it; he saw Faith in the hideout, Kreeg on a job out west, himself in his AC unit home, but no sign of Celeste. "She didn't shut off her comm, did she? Because if she did I am going to kill-"

At that moment Celeste strode into her hideout, a paper shopping bag in her left hand, her right hand pushing open the makeshift door. When Faith came into view she jumped. "Hey Faith," she said, "Didn't expect to see you here."

"Hi Cel." Nothing else; just typing.

"Why're you here? Something interesting happen?"

"Just a short encounter with some blues." She turned silent once more and the typing stopped; without the familiar clack of keys the air seemed to thicken, silence strangling both runners.

"Oh, just running some errands," claimed Cel. "Food, you know—can't live without it." Her voice wavered, and underneath her clean white sweatpants her legs trembled; her black-and-white-gloved hands twitched. Sitting down in her seat and opening the laptop, she hoped Faith wouldn't question further. Her hand shook too much to hit the power button.

Faith didn't respond, going back to typing her notes, and Celeste breathed a long inward sigh of relief. If only she could tell her, tell her the secrets weighing her down, tell her why she did what she did, tell her that they were friends, tell her that she was still her best. Tell her what was coming. Tell her to get ready.

But she couldn't, and as the laptop turned on Celeste stayed silent, leaving Faith to face the dangers her future held.


End file.
